The language diary

I studied in an English Medium School, in Kerala, where the rules on the language of communication was very strict. There was this particular rule, which stated - "The students are suppose to speak only English, while inside the school compound; except during the language hours, where respective languages can be used." This was equivalent of asking us not to use our mother tongue, the beautiful Malayalam language, for communication. But in our God's own country, as always, rules are made to be broken; no one bothered to obey this rule, unless in the close proximity of a teacher. So rather than to us, this rule became a head ache to the head of our institution.

The head of our institution, our beloved Headmaster (HM), was a nightmare, especially, when with his cane. Irrespective of whether you are a good student or a bad student, everyone gets scared by his presence; such was his cane’s reputation. And now, he had the task of enforcing the language rule, the reason due to which "the language diary system" was formulated.

The basic idea behind this system is simple ~ "find the users of Malayalam, punish them, and thereby, motivate them to speak English." A small pocket diary was used to serve this purpose. It acts as a log book, holding the names of mother tongue using mass of the class. This diary will have an owner, a temporary post, for which anyone using Malayalam was eligible. He has the task of, finding a new owner, and logging his name into this diary, at the earliest. For this, he should have some very good observation skills, keen enough to spot anyone speaking Malayalam. And if successful, log the new owner's name, and hand over the ownership to him. Now the new one has to do the same and keep it going. This process tracks the users of mother tongue, but won't stop them from using it. For that, some effective motivation was required.

Remaining is that "motivation” part of the system, motivating enough to make us speak English. It’s the two punishments associated with the violation of the language rule, one for the ordinary stake holders of the diary, and a special one for those distinguished owners who keeps it for more than three days. For the ordinary stake holders, it is to sit inside the class during the next lunch interval and study. And by doing so, we have to sacrifice our lunch interval games, our only motivation for coming to school.

Now for the distinguished owners, who blocks the journey of our diary for three days, it is the special one. It is a special meeting with the HM, during which, his cane will leave such an impression, which even the time will fail to erase, from both body and memory. By this punishment, our rule expects, at least one of the students to spell out a Malayalam word within three days, and the diary holder to be keen enough to spot that act.

Finally, on a fine Monday morning, during my sixth standard, the language diary came into our class. It was a busy customer in the beginning; breaking of language rule was so frequent. You could hear a lot of Malayalam words being spoken all around, and this made the process of passing this diary easy and frequent. At the end of the day you will find, at least, a quarter of the class population registered for the next day’s lunch interval class. And on the next day, this crowd will be seen seated inside the class, during the lunch break, cursing our universal language.

But as it went on, there was a sharp downfall in the rate at which diary got transferred. No one seemed to be interested in the "lunch break class", any longer. Now don't get the idea that we became comfortable with English, but we learned to adjust to the situation. We started spotting the current owner of the diary, and with this information, modulated the voice low enough to break away his sense of hearing.

Unfortunately, our hero got the diary during a peak drought period. Everyone came to know about our diary's current owner, and took special care not to bless his ears with Malayalam words. Thereafter, like a software engineer for a weekend, his ears were desperate for a Malayalam word. This desperate situation prevailed for two days, before it became acute; because if this continuous for one more day, he will be distinguished enough for the special meeting with the HM.

Now, our hero was scared to hell, thinking about meeting with HM. He was running out of time, had to do something urgently. No one was helping his course; some out of box act was required. Suddenly an idea stuck him. He marched towards a boy in the class, and without any warning, gave him a nice pinch on the back of his arm. Whatever the situation may be, our language system expects students to communicate only in English. But our poor guy’s reflex, was not so well versed in English, to cry out, "Mother' or "Mummy", in that severe, out of the blue pain. Instead, he screamed, "Ammaee" (Mother in Malayalam). And that was what our hero was desperate for, his ears were finally blessed, and right away he initiated the process to transfer the diary.